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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Legos!When Joseph went to Bethlehem I think he took great care to place his tools and close his shop and leave no shavings there...Baby's first present... It is the book "But No Elephants" by Jerry SmathPlaying in the snow in my new Christmas hatChristmas morningA new sled

Monday, December 21, 2009

We had a great time at the festival of trees and lots of the trees made us think of you...

The "Christmas League", Justice League for TylerHave a "Regular" Christmas, for the unamed relative who loves this sort of joke...This Star Wars Tree was going for $13,000 and we thought that was a deal...Look at the sparkle in J's eyesAndrea back in the single days...I liked this one, reminds me of Mom's snowman treesREAL soccer: for David, Sarah, DH, and me.PS. Woohoo, Salt Lake finally wins a national championship go REAL!!!! We were looking for this tree, we knew it had to be there.This tree reminds me of DH and Liss they both like this movie, "The Nightmare Before Christmas"Look close, the tree in the above picture is upside down! This gingerbread house is Jack's house from Nightmare Before Christmas, amazing!

I thought of a fun way to explain the big deal about omega 3 fats and trans fats to my kids, so here it is. I said good fats are our bodies building blocks. Squares were omega 3's, Rectangles omega 6's, and homemade silly putty were trans fats. A trans fat is when you take a liquid fat and make it a solid fat. Its fake though and doesn't make a very good building block for our body. For analogoy, I explained the silly putty was home-made and nowhere near as good for building towers as real Legos.

I explained that we need between 1:1 and 4:1 Omega 6 to Omega 3 fatty acids, but most Americans get between 10:1 and 25:1. I gave the kids 25 "Omega 6" Legos, trans fat, and one "Omega 3" Lego and asked them to build as many little buildings that had 2 "Omega 6" blocks as the base and an "Omega 3" as the chimney as they could. "We can only build one! What do we do with the rest of the "Omega 6" and the trans fat ? they asked. Then I explained that our bodies have the same problem. I asked them to try building with some "trans fat".

"You can't build anything with trans fat, its gross, it makes as mess!!!" They said.

"Yes, trans fat makes a mess of our bodies too" I said. "Would you like some more "Omega 3" instead"

"Yeees!" they said, lesson over.

They went around talking about Omega 3 for a week. It was cute.

These foods have omega 3 fatty acids:

These foods have omega 6 fatty acids:

We went on a scavenger hunt to clean out the kitchen of trans fats, usually it had the pillsbury dough boy on the label.

FYI on EFAs:

EFAs support the cardiovascular, reproductive, immune, and nervous systems. The human body needs EFAs to manufacture and repair cell membranes, enabling the cells to obtain optimum nutrition and expel harmful waste products. A primary function of EFAs is the production of prostaglandins, which regulate body functions such as heart rate, blood pressure, blood clotting, fertility, conception, and play a role in immune function by regulating inflammation and encouraging the body to fight infection. Essential Fatty Acids are also needed for proper growth in children, particularly for neural development and maturation of sensory systems, with male children having higher needs than females. Fetuses and breast-fed infants also require an adequate supply of EFAs through the mother's dietary intake.

Essential Fatty Acid imbalance isn't a historical problem because in the olden days we didn't have an over-processed diet and people ate more wild meat and fish. Grain fed rather than grass fed livestock and hens provide omega 6 fatty acids in the meat and eggs instead of omega 3. (Now you know why I always beg my hunting friends for venison, tasty source of omega 3...)

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Yes there were lots of tears involved from mother and daughter with little A's latest venture. While helping me make dinner the other night, she swiped a few of my seasonings and snuck to a far corner of the house where she proceeded to dump half a can of pepper over her head. Ouch!

Other ventures of late include locking herself in the laundry room which has no light or windows (we took the doorknob off to get her out) and hiding big sister's library book in the diaper pail (luckily it was empty at the time...) She really is such a cheerful kid. She is a morning person and always has a big smile which we really enjoy. She loves singing and knows the words to quite a few songs. She wants to be in the ward choir. She grabbed a hymnbook and jumped into line as the choir rehearsed today. She sung her heart out for awhile and then decided she needed to stand on the organ bench in order to see the director, which wasn't okay. Little D was busy flirting with the young women in the choir. He grinned and giggled at them nonstop. Obviously I wasn't much help to the choir today, but I really enjoy going, so they put up with me.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

My rating: 5 of 5 starsI thought I wouldn't like this, the cow on the cover didn't interest me much, but I did. It is a short, plain story just like Sarah, Plain and Tall, but it is amazing because MacLachlan uses each and every word on the page purposefully to create a lilting rythm that is a pleasure to read and to listen too. It is like a lullabye or poetry. And of course, my kids loved the sweet story!

Friday, December 4, 2009

Weird picture right? D has such a "ho-hum" expression! Monday, D volunteered at BYU's infant development lab. They monitored his responses to auditory and visual stimulus for 3 minutes. Each little circle on the cap monitors electrical impulses in the brain. The point of the study is to create a picture of how babies process what they see and hear, or in other words to get an idea how babies see the world. They gave us this picture as a souvenir. D was a good participant although he was mostly interested in eating the cap!